


The Truth About the Past

by ThePackWantstheD



Series: The Observations of Binary Stars [3]
Category: RWBY
Genre: F/M, Gen, Jealousy, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-29
Updated: 2015-12-29
Packaged: 2018-05-10 06:55:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5575648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThePackWantstheD/pseuds/ThePackWantstheD
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ruby's friends find a yearbook which causes her to doubt the sincerity of Qrow's feelings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Truth About the Past

**Author's Note:**

> For this prompt from tumblr: scythecest prompt: ruby learns that she and her mom have a lot in common. maybe a little TOO much in common. maybe she starts fearing that qrows now reciprocated affection is him subjecting his past feelings towards summer?

When Ruby walked into the library, she found the entirety of her team as well as team JNPR, Coco, and Velvet peering down at something on one of the tables. Yang, Weiss, Blake, Coco, Nora, and Jaune were pressed right up against the edge of the table, chattering excitedly. Coco had an arm around Velvet, keeping the girl close to her. She was just a step behind Coco. Pyrrha was pressed against Jaune's back, peering over his shoulder. Ren stood slightly behind Nora, a small gap separating them.

She made her way across the room, calling out, "What's everyone looking at?"

"They found some old yearbooks," Ren said.

She gave a small smile when he took a step back, allowing her to squeeze into the space behind Nora as she was the only one short enough that Ruby would be able to see over her.

"It's from when mom and dad were second years," Yang said. "We saw a few of the professors too.

"Really?" Ruby questioned as she leaned in.

Each page held photos of two teams. The team name was printed above a team photo and below the team photo were four smaller photos of the team. The team photos were all posed, though some teams clearly had more fun with the idea than others, while the others were impromptu shots.

"Uh huh. And let me tell you, Professor Goodwitch as just as smoking back than as she is now."

"Yang," Blake warned, glancing away from the pages to shoot her a look.

Yang looked up as well, sending Blake a smile full of teeth, "Aw, baby, you know you're the only one for me."

"I'm not jealous," the faunus answered with a roll of her eyes. "I just don't want to listen to you sexualizing a woman we have to see during training everyday. I'd never be able to look her in the eyes again."

"I don't know," Nora said as she went to turn the page. "Seeing those pictures of Oobleck make me want to stare at him more often."

Ruby heard Ren sigh behind her. "Nora, the reason you can't look at Oobleck is because he always know when your causing trouble. The fact that he was hot when he was nineteen isn't going to change that."

Ruby laughed softly as the group started talking about the four teams on the page they'd turned to, Coco was making a comment about how hot one of the men on the page looked while Pyrrha was admiring a spear held by one of the former students.

Thus far, their second year had been vastly different from their first year and Ruby liked it. She liked fighting, but the previous year had taught her to enjoy the calm moments. She wouldn't always be able to laugh with Nora as a professor chased them for a prank or read passengers from Ninjas in Love until a pale pink film covered Blake's cheeks. She wanted to have as many of those memories as possible for when they were all in the thick of the very dangerous profession they'd chosen.

"Oh! Is your parents team?" Ruby's thoughts were pulled back to the present at Weiss' exclamation.

"Team STRQ," Yang said, though her voice had lost from of it's excitement and gone a little distant. Ruby knew she was probably focused on Raven's picture printed onto the pages. She could see Blake's hand raising and settling on her girlfriend's upper arm.

"Is this your mom?" Jaune questioned. "Ruby looks just like her."

"Don't I?" Ruby said, her smile wide.

There was a picture of Summer Rose on their mantel at home, a single family photo from before her death was the center piece to a collection of photos and medals from Yang and Ruby's lives, and Ruby was well aware of how much they shared. Her short stature, brunette hair, and gleaming silver eyes she was a near spitting image of the woman.

When she looked down at the page, however, the smile dropped from her face.

The team photo was one she was familiar with, the photo of team STRQ around the tree that both her father and Qrow carried around. The outer small photos were of the two partnerships. The far left one was Raven swatting Taiyang over the head with a book as he leered at something off screen.

It was the one on the far right that had Ruby's mood dropping.

Qrow and Summer were sitting at a table together. A much simpler version of Qrow's scythe was open in front of him while he cleaned it. Summer sat at his side, her arm wrapped around his and her head leaned on his arm. Her eyes were closed, but her mouth was open as though the photographer had caught her in the middle of speaking. There was a quiet sort of affection in the photo, love in Summer's smile and the way Qrow tilted his head as though he didn't want to risk missing her words.

She had known Qrow and her mother had been in a relationship when they were in school. Though it wasn't something they actively talked about, it had never been hidden from the girls. Nowadays when she looked back on the stories he had told her as a child it was easy to tell that the separation between 'Taiyang and Raven' and 'Qrow and Summer' weren't just because they were partners.

It wasn't something Ruby usually dwelled on, but having it stare her in the face had her mind racing and her stomach dropping.   
Especially when combined with Jaune's echoing statement about her resemblance to her mother.

"Ruby?"

"Mmm?"

She tore her eyes from the photo. Pyrrha was looking at her, a tiny frown on her face. "Are you okay?"

"Fine!" Ruby said, forcing a chirp into her voice and smiling brightly. "I was just thinking about a story dad had told me from his school days."

"Oh which one?" Yang questioned. "Was it the one about that time some guy stuck dad to the wall with shuriken? I love that story."

There was a moment before Weiss inquired, "Someone stuck your father to the wall with shuriken?"

"Ooooh yeah. Dad was a huge flirt. When he was a first year he hit on some third year who had a boyfriend. The fall out was epic," Yang said.

"Tell us about it," Jaune said.

"Sure! Though, I don't remember all the details."

"I can lend a hand," Ruby said. "Between the two of us we should have the whole story."

Blake's eyebrows furrowed, her gaze flickering over to Ruby. There was a small frown on her lips. "Are you sure? Isn't about time for you to make your call?"

Qrow was in-between missions again, settled into his position teaching engineering at Signal for the next few months. Ruby had a habit of calling him after both of their classes had ended. Sometimes it was just a few minutes and sometimes it was a few hours, but she rarely missed a call without letting him know why.

"The story shouldn't take that long," Ruby dismissed. "I'll call him when we finish."

Blake watched her for another moment.

As the only one who Ruby had ever actively spoken to about her relationship with Qrow, she had the most knowledge. Yang knew only what she had observed, which was an awful lot but not nearly as much as Ruby had told Blake, and Weiss knew nothing at all.

"Alright," Blake said at last. "If that's what you want."

* * *

 

Ruby didn't end up calling that night. Or the next.

On the third day Qrow sent her a message asking if she was okay and she sent him a half-baked response about being buried in school work. His response made it clear that while he didn't exactly believe her, he was going to let her have her space to work out whatever she was going through.

Distance wasn't exactly fixing the problem.

The longer she was on her own, the more she wondered about.

Was Qrow still in love with her mother? Were his feelings for her based solely off her resemblance to her mother? Was he trying to keep old of the one thing Summer had left behind when she died?

The thoughts stung. It made her eyes burn and her chest throb.

She knew a lot of people would dismiss their relationship. They would say that Qrow was manipulating her or that her feelings were nothing more than a crush, but the truth was that she had found a perfect match in Qrow. He understood the things about her that no one else quite understood and knew all the best ways to encourage her to be better.

The idea that he didn't feel the same way hurt her more than anything else she'd felt before.

* * *

A week after they found the yearbook, Ruby found herself in the library again.

She took a few battle classes with her teammates, but a scythe was such a rare weapon that most of the classes offered by the school weren't much help to her.

Thus she had decided to pick up a few more classes on engineering and weapon design than she had during her first year which led to a lot more time in the library reading on aerodynamics or the different ways to use dust in a weapon.

She was making her way over to one of the tables where she could work on her latest project for class when she spotted Yang sitting at one of the CCTS terminals that Beacon's library contained. She wondered for a moment who Yang was talking to - her father or one of her friends? - before her sister shifted just enough for her to see the screen.

Qrow was sitting in his office at Signal. His hair was sticking up at all angles and there were light purple bruises under his eyes. Despite looking as though he hadn't slept well in days, there was a teasing smile on his lips as he said something to Yang.

Ruby found that it absolutely sucked to watch Yang talking to Qrow when she herself couldn't. They had spoken to often that the last, and only, time they'd been out of contact for this long was when she'd first come to Beacon and he'd been off on his mission for Ozpin.

She was about to turn on her heel and leave, she would just check out the book she needed to help her, when Yang tossed a look over her shoulder and caught her eyes.

"Hey! Rubs! Just the person we were talking about!" Yang called.

Ruby's eyes flickered over to Qrow as she shuffled over to them. His smile had dropped, his lips setting in a firm line as he watched her. "You were talking about me?"

"Qrow said he hadn't spoken to you recently," Yang said. "So I was reassuring him that you weren't off fighting criminals on your own again."

"Ah... I've been busy with school. I actually came here to work on my design for class."

There was a moment before Qrow sighed. "Yang, can you give Ruby and I a second?"

Yang looked back at Qrow before nodding. "Alright. I should probably go track Ren down anyway. He promised to help me with some homework today and that's not going to happen if he gets dragged into one of Nora's schemes."

"If you go look for them, you're going to get dragged into one of Nora's schemes," Ruby pointed out.

A grin spread over Yang's face, "Yeah, but that'll be more fun than homework."

She said a quick goodbye to Qrow and leaned over to press a kiss to Ruby's cheek before leaving.

Ruby hesitated before moving to take her spot. She stared at the screen just to the left of Qrow's face, avoiding his eyes. "Hello."

"Hey." Neither of them said anything for at moment. It was Qrow who broke the silence. He let out another heavy sigh, reaching up to push a hand through his hair. "Ruby, what's going on? It's not like you to ignore me for no reason. If you were angry with me maybe, but I'm pretty sure we didn't get in a fight before you decided to stop talking to me."

She chewed on her lip for a minute before asking, "Did Yang tell you what we found last week?"

Qrow's eyebrows knitted in confusion. "The yearbook?"

She gave a small nod. She dropped her gaze from his. "There was a picture of you and mom in it."

"Okay? It's not like you didn't know about Summer and I."

"I know but..." She searched for the words. At last, she came up with, "I'd never seen it before. I didn't realize how you loved her. Seeing it made me wonder if it was actually me you were looking at or if you loved me because I'm part of her."

There was another pause before Qrow said, his words coming out soft and understanding, "Ruby, Summer was my teammate. My partner, at that. I will always love her, but I haven't been in love with her since Yang was born. We didn't break up because she was in love with your father, we broke up because we weren't in love with each other."

She lifted her gaze, meeting his eyes through the screen. "Then...you don't like me because I remind you of mom?"

"You may look like your mom, but you are nothing like her," Qrow said. "The only similarity between you and your mother is your desire to help people. Summer hated fighting. She was a huntress because she wanted to help people, but she didn't feel the same rush that you and I get from it. She was a lot more soft spoken then you as well. You're all your father as far as that goes."

She pursed her lips together in thought.

It wasn't like she could know for sure that Qrow was telling the truth, but he rarely lied to her and when he did, she had a figuring it out. It was a testament to how deep their bond ran.

"I feel silly now," Ruby said at last. "I should've just spoken to you about this before."

"You should've," Qrow agreed. "But you're sixteen. You're allowed a little confusion and jealousy."

"You don't mind putting up with it?"

He shrugged, "I'm going to be putting up with you for a very long time. No reason to get upset about it this early in life."

His words brought a smile to her face. Settling in comfortably, she asked, "Can I tell you about my week? Or do you have to go soon?"

"I've got time," he assured.

"You didn't even check."

"I haven't spoken to you in a week, Ruby. If you want to talk, I'll make the time. Now tell me about this project your supposed to be working on."

 


End file.
